RICHLY
RISKED: What happens when an author, discovered by a publisher
and earnestly promoted, strikes it big, winning prizes and selling
millions of books? Well, he writes a second novel. But the author
has gotten so big, the publisher who took a risk on him is unable
to afford the advance - projected to be about $5 million. Charles
Frazier is the author, and his second book is about to go to bid.
Grove Atlantic, which published Frazier's Cold Mountain
to such acclaim, is likely out of the running because of the money
involved. Fair? The New York Times
03/29/02

WHERE
BOOKS GO TO DIE: What happens to books that for one reason
or another fail to sell? There is, after all, a storage problem
to deal with. They go to a book return company - some 25,000 a
day at one firm in Essex - to be assessed. "Most are destined
to be pulped. Almost 10 per cent of all newly published books
end up being shredded. If your book is ever threatened with being
remaindered, don't fret about it - there are worse fates."
Sydney Morning Herald 03/29/02

RECORD
PRICES FOR LINCOLN AND EINSTEIN DOCUMENTS:
"An autographed manuscript of Abraham Lincoln’s last speech,
delivered from the window of the White House three days before
his assassination in 1865, was sold for $3,086,000 — the most
ever paid for a U.S. historical document. Albert Einstein’s letter
to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning him of the potential
for 'the construction of extremely powerful bombs,' which helped
launch U.S. research leading to the development of the atomic
bomb, was sold for $2.10 million, a record price for a letter."MSNBC 03/28/02

TIME
MAY HAVE COME FOR AN UNAPPRECIATED GENRE:
There are mysteries and westerns and sci-fi galore, but what happened
to stories about the business world? As a category, it's lain
fallow for decades; the few examples which come to mind have been
mostly satire, or forgettable (or both). One reason may be that
writers have turned up their noses at the materialism of corporate
life, although they're latched onto materialism elsewhere with
little trouble. "Why haven't business journalists filled
the breach? Our hunch is a lack of imagination stands in the way
at least as much the lack of time between deadlines."The Deal.com 03/28/02

Thursday March 28

NO-MAN'S
LAND: Are book clubs a women's domain? "Every time I've
tried to score a seat in a group, I've been blackballed. One of
my best friends stared me and my request right in the eyes and
burst out laughing. Another acquaintance invited me to join her
group, which was suffering from attrition and malaise. I seemed
like the perfect solution - until she learned that the club was
no-man's land, literally. But the worst was the time my candidacy
made it all the way to a full-group discussion and vote. I lost
by a single nay. 'It was so close,' said one of my supporters.
'I think you would have gotten in if you were gay.' I'm learning
to live with rejection." Salon
03/26/02

LATIN
LEGACY: It is one of the great literary paradoxes of the last
century that the nations of Latin America could have been plagued
by so many vicious dictators and repressive regimes, and yet still
produced so many successful and widely-read novelists. Mario Vargas
Llosa is one of the most prolific and well-known, and, like so
many of his contemporaries, he has spent his career treading the
line between writing and politics. (Llosa even ran for president
in his native Peru.) But to him, the spirit of Latin American
writing is a special quality that has never been duplicated.
The New York Times 03/28/02

Wednesday March 27

LIBRARIANS
PROTEST NEW INTERNET CENSORSHIP ROLE: Librarians are protesting
a US law that requires libraries to use filtering software on
computers. "They want to offer patrons a choice between filtered
and unfiltered Internet access, contending that parents and children
should be the ones who determine what content they find unacceptable
- not the government." The New
York Times (AP) 03/26/02

ALCOTT'S
LAST WORK LOOKING FOR A PUBLISHER: Louisa May Alcott's last
work before her death at age 55 was a short story set in China,
written as an attempt to gently rein in an unruly niece. The story
has never been published without revisions and editings for space.
"Now the original version is being offered to publishers
with the deleted passages restored and with illustrations by May
Alcott Nieriker. The purpose is to raise money for the restoration
of Orchard House, the Alcott family home in Concord, [Massachusetts,]
where Little Women takes place." The
New York Times 03/27/02

Tuesday March 26

RETHINKING
ARTS COVERAGE: The Los Angeles Times and the New York Times
are in the midst of rethinking their arts coverage. "Should
arts coverage be news or feature oriented? Should the emphasis
be on 'high culture' or pop culture? To what degree should the
demands of celebrity journalism be catered to? How should stories
that link business to the arts be played?" Not surprisingly,
many in the arts are watching with concern. Yahoo!
(Reuters) 03/25/02

STIFF
UPPER LIPS: German publishing is said to be in disarray. At
last week's Leipzig Book Fair, "the urgency and determination
with which publishers tried to exploit Leipzig for all it was
worth were so palpable that the atmosphere at the fair was characterized
by a strange mixture of defiance and lethargy, by the readiness
to discuss and test new concepts in full view of the public as
well as by the fear of still more bad news. The fact that most
eyes remained glued to the balance sheet and that there was not
the slightest evidence of any intellectual aversion to commercialism
was as predictable as it was legitimate." Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung 03/26/02

DUELING
LIVES: Biographers are among the age's 'most successful literary
realtors', as the poet Geoffrey Hill scornfully puts it, and biography
continues to be an expanding genre, feeding the appetite for story
left unsatisfied by so much modern fiction, addressing the whole
human span, from beginnings to ends. So these tussles to dominate
the market - to have a biography become, for a few years at least,
the biography of the subject - will continue." London
Evening Standard 03/25/02

EVERYBODY
HATES ME: Author Salman Rushdie said in a German interview
that he thinks the British press is out to discredit him. "These
ambush writers are probably angry that I wasn't killed. They are
holding a grudge against me for surviving the fatwa and that I'm
now leading a better life." BBC
03/26/02

Monday March 25

GOOD
YEAR FOR BOOKS: Sales for America's top three bookstore chains rose
3.7% to $7.51 billion, for the fiscal year ended February 2.Publishers Weekly 03/25/02

ITALY
LEAVES BOOKFAIR: Italy officially withdrew from the Paris
Book Show after demonstrators showed up protesting Italian prime
minister Silvio Berlusconi. The fair was to honor the culture
of Italy, but Berlusconi's right-center politics and some of his
comments about culture have angered many.Washington Post (AP) 03/25/02

Previously: ITALY'S
CRISIS OF LEADERSHIP: Italy's big cultural institutions
are in political turmoil. Critics charge that the "centre-right
Government of Silvio Berlusconi, which took office nine months
ago, seems unable to find the right people to run Italy’s art
centres, cultural institutes overseas, or even — and most damagingly
— the Venice Film Festival in September." The
Times (UK) 03/20/01

COPYING
IN PERSPECTIVE: Just mention of the dreaded "p"
word can send a writer's career into a spin. But "what is
'plagiarism'? and Why is it reprobated? These are important questions.
The label 'plagiarist' can ruin a writer, destroy a scholarly
career, blast a politician's chances for election, and cause the
expulsion of a student from a college or university." Yet
not all copying or borrowing of someone else's work is bad. Indeed
we want to encourage it.The
Atlantic 04/02

Sunday March 24

$$$
AS ATTENTION-GETTER: Canada is justifiably proud of its literary
tradition, and has the big-money prizes to prove it. Buckets of
'em, in fact, which begs the question: what good does it do the
literary world in general, and struggling but talented young writers
in particular, when these large cash awards consistently go to
writers who don't need the money? The truth may be that the only
reason the prize money is as big as it is is to get the media
to pay attention. Toronto Star 03/23/02

Friday March 22

DOMAIN
GRAB THAT DOESN'T RHYME: The UK's Poetry Society has been
running a successful website. But the organization forgot to renew
the registration of its domain name www.poetrysoc.com, and "last
Thursday, visitors to the society's website found not poetry but
a directory of online service providers offering everything from
Viagra pills to hair-loss treatments." Now the organization
"faces a potentially expensive legal fight to get the name
back." BBC 03/21/02

Thursday March 21

THREE
CRITICAL FLAVORS: Literary criticism is an attractive profession
- the traits to be a good one are a fuzzy alchemy of skills that
are difficult to quantify. Why do Germany's literary critics currently
seem to come in one of three flavors - charlatans, fools or groupies.
None is particularly enlightening.Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung 03/21/02

WAITING
FOR DIVERSITY: "Maybe the most important thing that ever
happened in this country for Hispanics wanting to read relevant
books was the 2000 census. It said, hey, publishers, there are
35.3 million Latinos out there. So book publishers started to
awaken from the somnolence that often embraces them when it comes
to the new and started to take notice. Awakened might be too strong
a word, but things are slowly changing for Hispanic writers and
their audience." The New York
Times 03/21/02

SAVING
MALCOLM: "Nearly 40 years after his death, the documentary
legacy of Malcolm X is largely scattered and not controlled even
by his family. Now that may change. The scare of the auction has
sparked a renewed push by Malcolm X's daughters and the academics
allied with them to finally gather, archive and preserve his papers
and personal memorabilia." Washington
Post 03/20/02

Tuesday March 19

PROMISE
NO PRICE-FIXING: Last summer, the European Commission
began investigating several German publishers and book traders,
among them the Bertelsmann subsidiary Random House, of price fixing.
Now the Commission says if the publishers promise to stop price
fixing, they won't be fined.Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung 03/18/02

AUTHORS
HATE TO BE USED: In the past year online booksellers have
been selling used books right next to their new copies. Within
days of a new book being sold online, used copies also start turning
up. Authors and publishers - who don't reap any money from such
sales - are feeling abused. Wired
03/19/02

Monday March 18

ONE
COUNTRY, ONE BOOK: Maybe New York can't agree on just one
book for everyone to read. But Canada's CBC thinks it can get
the whole country focused on one tome. "A panel of five eminent
Canadians select one work of fiction for the country to read together.
CBC Radio will broadcast the Canada Reads panel discussion twice
daily from April 15 to 19."National
Post 03/15/02

WRITER
OF SLIGHT: Thomas Kinkade sells schlocky landscape paintings,
"sold in thousands of mall-based franchise galleries nationwide,"
and earning "$130 million in sales last year."
"According to Media Arts Group, the publicly traded company
that sells Kinkade reproductions and other manifestations of 'the
Thomas Kinkade lifestyle brand,' including furniture and other
examples of what the company's chairman memorably called 'art-based
products,' his work hangs in one out of every 20 American homes."
Now Kinkade's "written" a novel, a "shamelessly
money-grubbing little bait-and-switch" aesthetically in line
with the rest of the Kinkade empire.Salon
03/17/02

Sunday March 17

BIG
BAD TORONTO: Every country seems to have one - that city where
power and prestige live and where its inhabitants are envied and
disliked by the rest of the country. Toronto is Canada's. "The
myths about Toronto publishing and Toronto writers make me laugh.
We have all had massive six-figure advances, we all drive Porsches,
we all write silly, superficial, gossipy literature, we all actually
have no talent, we only get the massive advances because we live
in Toronto."The
Globe & Mail (Canada) 03/16/02

Friday March 15

COPY-BUSTER: Student plagiarism has been a thriving
industry since the internet made it possible to digitally crib
ready-made essays. But new software is becoming an effective cop.
"After highlighting instances of replication, or obvious
paraphrasing (according to Turnitin, some 30% of submitted papers
are 'less than original'), the computer running the software returns
the annotated document to the teacher who originally submitted
it—leaving him with the final decision on what is and is not permissible."The Economist
03/14/02

Thursday March 14

E-VICTORY:
An appeals judge has ruled against Random House in a suit the
publisher brought against an e-book publisher. RosettaBooks has
been publishing e-versions of books Random House had published
as far back as the 1960s. Rosetta says the original publishing
contracts only covered print versions and Random House didn't
own electronic rights. The US Appeals Court agrees. Random House
vows to continue the case. Wired 03/13/02

CUTTING
BACK BOOKS: In a cost-cutting move, the Philadelphia Inquirer
has cut its weekly books section from four pages to one. "Sources
close to the Inquirer say the book review section was gutted in
response to corporate parent Knight Ridder's demand that the paper
immediately reduce annual newsprint costs by $500,000. Reportedly,
the Inquirer responded with a counter-offer to reduce newsprint
costs by $350,000, which Knight Ridder agreed to."Philadelphia Weekly 03/13/02

HOW
ABOUT DON CHERRY'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY? Chicago's "One Book,
One Chicago" project, in which the entire city was encouraged
to read the same book at the same time, has spawned a plethora
of copycats across the U.S. Now, Canada is going Chicago one better,
with a plan to mount a nationwide version of the project. The
short list of potential books is out, with the one qualification
being that every author considered must be Canadian. National
Post (Canada) 03/14/02

Wednesday March 13

THE
LATE MR SALINGER: The much anticipated publication of a "new"
novella by JD Salinger has been postponed indefinitely. "The
novella, Hapworth 16, 1924, was due to be published in
November and would have been the first publication from Salinger
in 40 years. The small Virginia publisher that Salinger had chosen
to release the novella, Orchises Press, say that the book will
eventually appear. But there is no new date for publication. The
story originally appeared in magazine form in the New Yorker in
1965 and in the 1990s there were plans for a proper publication.
An unkind early review in the New York Times is seen as a possible
reason for the delay."The
Guardian (UK) 03/13/02

Tuesday March 12

BOOK
CIRCLE WINNERS: The National Book Critics Circle announced
its annual awards Monday night. At the 27th annual awards ceremony
in New York City, the critics honored Austerlitz, a novel
by W.G. Sebald, as the best work of fiction. Sebald died in a
car crash in December. Double Fold, a book about libraries'
archiving procedures by Nicholson Baker, won for general nonfiction."
The Plain Dearler (Cleveland) 03/12/02

HAMISH HENDERSON, 82: Scottish poet Hamish Hendson has
died at the age of 82. "Henderson was, first and last, a
poet, and poetry was for them both language rising into song,
responsible to moment, people, place and joy. Not for Henderson
Auden's conceit that poetry never made anything happen; he believed
that 'poetry becomes people' and changes nations, that poetry
elevates and gives expression to the deepest and best being of
mankind, that poetry is a measure that extends far beyond the
written word, that poetry is pleasure and a call to arms."
The Guardian
(UK) 03/11/02

Monday March 11

DUBLIN
PRIZE FINALISTS: Finalists for the world's richest literary
prize have been announced. "The contenders for the International
Impac Dublin Literary Award 2002 include two Booker prize winners:
Peter Carey's True History Of the Kelly Gang and Margaret
Atwood's The Blind Assassin." BBC
03/11/02

Sunday March 10

THE
COST OF STEALING: Plagiarism isn't just about the perpetrators.
The writers whose work is stolen sometimes made enormous sacrifices
to get their research to the page. One historian/writer extensively
plagiarized by Stephen Ambrose has spent a career of hardship
researching his work for books about World War II. It's like having
your life stolen. Baltimore Sun 03/10/02

MATHEMATICALLY
PLAGIARISTIC: "John L. Casti, a science writer who
teaches at the Technical University of Vienna and at the Santa
Fe Institute in New Mexico, has been accused of lifting a substantial
number of extended passages from other sources in his latest
book, "Mathematical Mountaintops: The Five Most Famous Problems
of All Time" (Oxford, 2001). Mr. Casti's book, written for the
lay reader, describes mathematicians' explorations of complicated
ideas involving maps, numbers and spaces. But along the way
Mr. Casti's research apparently got a bit out of hand."The New York Times 03/09/02

Friday March 8

GATSBY
IS TOPS: A new survey of top authors, critics, and actors
has declared that Jay Gatsby is the greatest literary character
of the 20th century, narrowly edging Holden Caulfield of Catcher
in the Rye fame. Vladimir Nabokov's Humbert Humbert makes
the list as well, but, in a stunning snub, Douglas Adams's Arthur
Dent is nowhere to be found.National
Post (AP) 03/08/02

GOODWIN
HITS BACK: Speaking at a Saint Paul college, embattled historian
Doris Kearns Goodwin insisted that her reputation will survive
the current plagiarism charges being leveled against her. While
admitting that she had made grave mistakes in allowing unattributed
passages to make their way into her books, she declared, "I
know absolutely that I have dealt fairly and honestly with all
my subjects." Minneapolis Star Tribune
03/08/02

Thursday March 7

ALL
PART OF THE (BOOK) DEAL: "In our luminary-fascination
society, the book deal is an accouterment to instant or durable
celebrity, so reflexive a part of fame that when people see a
new name in the news they just know a book is sure to pop up.
And usually they are right. With a few notable exceptions, there
is little to be said for the value of these books. Still, they
have always been one of publishing's sexiest genres. People apparently
are both fascinated and appalled by the large money advances they
bring." The New York Times 03/07/02

DOES
IT TAKE A CITY TO READ A BOOK? One novelist doesn't like the
let's-all-read-the-same-book phenomenon. "Now comes a committee
of 21 professional book salesmen and librarians who are going
to burst right into my reading life and tell me what to read so
I can talk about it with my neighbors. For all its impressive
credentials, this campaign is just another form of advertising.
[W]hy stop with books? Why don't the movie professionals prescribe
a movie for us to see and the health professionals a diet and
the fashion professionals a set of clothes? Why don't we wear
uniforms? Why don't we all eat the same breakfast?"Newsday 02/06/02

BUT
I THOUGHT EVERYONE BOUGHT 17,000 COPIES OF HIS OWN BOOK: David
Vise wanted to promote his book. So he went on tour, appeared
on TV shows, set up a web site. All the usual stuff. Then he went
one step further. "Vise also bought between 16,000 and 18,000
copies of his own book from an online bookseller, Barnesandnoble.com,
and then returned most of them in a confusing series of transactions.
This unusual tactic has prompted suspicions that he was trying
to manipulate bestseller lists by creating phantom sales, which
Vise firmly denies."Washington
Post 02/07/02

Wednesday March 6

SPEAKING
ABOUT WRITING: There are so many book festivals in Australia
now that writers spend a good part of their time speaking about
their work. "There are a lot of writers who feel uncomfortable
about it, embarrassed that what they have to do is give a performance
which is neither related to the writing nor their real self."
The Age (Melbourne) 03/06/02

CHAMPIONING
THE UNDERGROUND: Is the literary establishment corrupt, awarding
its prizes and grants and favors to one another? The Underground
Literary Alliance thinks so. The newly-formed group has been attacking
what it considers injustices of the system - writers who are awarded
NEA grants and then sit on panels to award other grants, wealthy
recipients of awards intended to go to writers who need a basic
income so they can write..."It's a kind of advocacy group
to stand up for writers, and the interests of underground writers,
number one, but maybe writers in general also. You do have writers
organizations out there, but they revolve around writers who don't
need help." MobyLives 03/05/02

CANADIAN
SELF-CONGRATULATION: Canada is famous for its constant hand-wringing
over the state of its culture. And who wouldn't be a bit edgy
(and nationalistic) with America right next door oozing its big
low-culture butt into your chair every time you turn around? So
when a new set of awards for Canadian culture pops up, as seems
to happen every couple of minutes, most see it as a good thing.
This week, a new slate of literary prizes has been inaugurated
in Toronto, and organizers openly tout their belief in Canadian
global literary dominance. National
Post (CP) 03/06/02

DEGREES
OF WRONGNESS: Let's not lump the plagiarizing transgressions
of historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose together.
Goodwin "admirably insists that 'professional standards for
historians need never be sacrificed in popular history' and has
conscientiously tried to protect her reputation. Ambrose has in
effect conceded that his writing isn't scholarship—and thus has
felt free to shrug off his critics." Slate
03/05/02

BOOKER
WINNER JAILED: "The Booker prize-winning author, Arundhati
Roy, has been sentenced to a symbolic one-day prison term and
fined 2,000 rupees ($42) after being found guilty of contempt
of court. India's Supreme Court made the ruling in connection
with remarks she made about a legal decision to allow work on
the controversial Narmada Dam project." BBC
03/06/02

Tuesday March 5

BEWARE OF TECHNOLOGY: Disney chief Michael Eisner told
the Association of American Publishers that technology is one
of their biggest threats. "Eisner charged that technologists
have been dragging their feet in developing methods to block piracy,
while they sell equipment that abets illegally copying. Eisner
said that while he favors letting the private sector try to find
a solution to illegally copying, the government may need to step
in if technology companies do not begin addressing the issue more
aggressively."Publishers Weekly
03/04/02

THE SECOND GUTENBERG REVOLUTION: Gutenberg's Bible signaled a revolution
in the dissemination of information back in the 16th century.
Now it signals another. The Library of Congress, which owns one
of three copies of the Bible, has started a project to "photograph,
scan and digitize every binding, endsheet and page of the three-volume
Bible. 'We're hoping to take digital technology as far as it goes
and bring this book to life. We hope to make this book more
accessible than even Gutenberg did'." Wired 03/04/02

Monday March 4

DEFENDING
THE SELF-PUBLISHED: Why do so many critics treat self-publishing
as if it were the greatest threat to an intelligent society? "The
sheer magnitude and intensity of vitriol poured upon those who
would dare to enter the holy realm of the published seems totally
out of proportion with its object. Self-published books are truly
the snuff pornography of the publishing world: universally condemned
as crude, exploitative, offensive, and even dangerous, while at
the same time rarely if ever seen." GoodReports
03/03/02

ALTERNATIVE
PRESS: Unable to agree on a single book for New Yorkers to
read (following the example of several American cities), last
week New York got competing everybody-read-the-same-book programs.
"The New York Women's Agenda, a coalition of women's groups,
decided to go its own way and organize an alternative citywide
reading program, to be called New York Reads, scheduled for September
to coincide with the start of the school year." Chicago
Tribune 03/04/02

GOING
AFTER DORIS: As stories in the press mount up about plagiarizing
historians, some anonymous tipsters seem to have a particular
in for Doris Kearns Goodwin. "It's hard not to believe there
isn't something sexist about the relentless lambasting Goodwin's
getting," writes MobyLives' Dennis Johnson of the anonymous
e-mails he's been getting about Goodwin. MobyLives
03/04/02

Sunday March 3

CENSORSHIP
OR EDITING? When a prominent Oxford professor was asked
to write a piece on Tony Blair by the London Review of Books,
he turned in a piece praising the Prime Minister for his conduct
since September 11. Did the magazine kill the piece
because editors didn't like the politics? The
Guardian 03/02/02

Friday March 1

PRESSURE
TO PLAGIARIZE: Why are respected historians plagiarizing other
people's work? "There is some truth to the claim that trade
publishing has become a harried, assembly-line operation with
its head on the block. Only serial blockbusters can stay the ax
man's hand. Thus many books have become as formulaic and shoddy
as the flicks that Hollywood churns out. Publishers and writers
are desperate to cash in on the latest craze, be it baseball,
the founding fathers or jihad. Their livelihoods depend on it."Los Angeles Times 02/28/02

AN
EXPLANATION (BARELY), NOT AN EXCUSE: "Books are the
products of artisans and artists, and this doesn't allow for
them to be mass-produced at their creation like toasters that
some assembly line puts together out of these and those parts
gathered from here and there. If writers do want to try to run
a factory, fine: just as long as they use their own raw materials."
The New York Times 02/28/02